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TriangulatingConversation

Offshoot of PollYouAreIncompetent

Why is triangulating conversation OK right then?" (And sometimes it is.), "How general is the 'competence' being assessed?", and "What happens now?"

JimBullock 2006.09.05

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I'm curious, when is triangulating conversation OK? What makes it OK in certain circumstances and not in others?

I've had enormous difficulty in the past with people who enjoy triangulating others and I'd love to understand the whole topic better. Maybe I can learn to handle it without getting tremendously angry every time I hear about people discussing me when I'm not there...

SuePetersen 2006.09.06

I may have misunderstood what Sue wrote, I don't consider "someone talking about me when I am not there" triangulating. Extreme example, I talk about George Bush and Bill Clinton when they are not here, I don't think that is triangulating.

I am living through triangulating in my office right now. I believe it is when Joe tells Sam, "Tell Dwayne such and such." Joe sits ten feet away from me. He could directly tell me such and such, but instead he told someone else to tell me. What is up with that?

When is this triangulating alright? When Joe is leaving on a two-month trip and will be out of contact for that time. Also, when the message being triangulated is innocent enough (a very subjective term) like, "we bought blue coffee cups instead of green ones" or "the meeting is at 9AM instead of 9:15AM.

DwaynePhillips 7 September 2006

Perhaps a useful distinction for "triangulating" could be: "having a conversation about a person when it would be more effective to have it with that person". For instance, delivering 'feedback' about Dwayne to someone other than Dwayne. (Are there types of message other than feedback that come under this distinction ?)

Using that distinction, the problem with triangulating isn't so much whether it's "OK". The problem is that it won't achieve what you'd like to achieve (by definition), for instance it's unlikely that Dwayne's competence will improve as a result of delivering your 'feedback' to someone other than Dwayne.

On the other hand, the Law of Unintended Consequences may well kick in and a triangulating conversation may have further effects - possibly effects you don't desire.

-- LaurentBossavit 7.9.2006

Yep. That's what I was getting at. Didn't have the words. I was stuck in particular examples. One is "sending a message" through third parties. Another is confusing yourself into thinking you've addressed something with Ethyl by talking to Fred about her. Both of those are Bad and Wrong and way too common in work and families. Another is the "unintended consequences" you mention, which pretty much goes with anything you might do.

Yet those first two examples are different from, for example, a manager of people getting some input from a third person about someone they manage. Borrowing from the speech act people, asking for an assessment seems potentially innocuous. "Hey George, how's Fred doing?" A whole conversation may follow as you work to understand what you've been offered. Asking for observations seems potentially innocuous. "Is that review Fred's running working?" Expressing a need in terms of another person seems a bit stranger, but doesn't seem necessarily wrong to me. "Hey Jim, I need Shane on that client call with me." Even "Hey Jim, this guy Shane working for you takes forever." isn't necessarily a bad thing.

There's a lot of risk with generalizations and agenda if you ask for an assessment, yet that goes with anybody. "I'm incompetent", "You're incompetent." are both still generalizations, even with two folks talking directly. I suspect you can even triangulate a bit with yourself if you try hard enough: "So, Jim II, Jim I here. How's Jim III doing?" "He's incompetent." That's a useless answer because it's too vague or worse than useless if Jim I sits on that assessment to zap Jim III with it later. The problem isn't the triange in either case.

As long as you bring your salt shaker for what you've heard, the simple fact of a triangle in the communication doesn't seem necessarily Bad and Wrong to me. Seriously, "Hey Sis, where's Peter?" "Oh, he's off playing with his snakes." What bad happened here?

- JimBullock, 2006.09.20

Interesting, I find I'm having trouble defining a "triangulating conversation". It's one of those things where "I know it when I see it..."

I'm getting it a little, I think. I flipped past Dr. Phil last night and caught one of his couch intervention dramas. (I was waiting for my Firefly DVD to load. I don't watch that stuff on purpose.) So these two distraught people were talking with great intensity to Dr. Phil, and saying not a thing to him. They were talking at each other, through him.

So, I think I'm getting it. Simply having three people and "about" words making a triangle isn't sufficient. (It's necessary, I think.) The other piece is talking to whomever you are having a conversation with. If you're saying words *to* Dr. Phil, make sure they're words *for* Dr. Phil. If the message is for whoever you are talking "about", that's triangulating.

How does that play for you, Sue? -- JimBullock 2006.09.21 (Or you could answer on behalf of someone else if you like.)

OK, that's getting a lot closer to the 'triangulating' that bothers me. (I've been known to quickly exit a room, or to make a screaming dive for the OFF switch, when shows like Dr. Phil appear on the TV. Too many bad memories from my childhood, I won't willingly expose myself to that kind of emotional environment any more.)

I'd call your example 'talking thru' instead of 'talking to', and it can be very destructive to a relationship. But, under the right circumstances, I've seen it be productive and healing. (That particular case involved having a conversation with a professional therapist in the room, and it did work.)

There's another type of triangulating where Person A is talking to Person B, and (maybe) deliberating trying to sabotage Person C. And that goes with your remarks on agendas and assessments above. After thinking about this discussion and everybody's comments, I can see where such a conversation can be necessary, helpful and/or innocuous. I do think we need to be very very alert and wary, however. I suspect it can go bad pretty quickly.

--SuePetersen 2006.09.21

Some background - I live and work in a multi-generational family business. That means it has all of the political issues that any small business has, and all of the political-emotional issues that a family has. I'm an in-law, and several of the blood family would probably prefer it if I was an outlaw... <wry g> Several of our employees have been with us almost as long as I have, almost 30 years in some cases. That makes them almost family in many ways, some emotionally healthy, others perhas not so healthy.

My husband and I have been running the whole thing since 1999, and have been pretty successful financially. This produces all sorts of odd emotional undercurrents with my inlaws. I've managed over the years to detach myself emotionally from the situation to the point that I can get frustrated over it but it doesn't consume my time and energy the way it used to. I recently discovered, somewhat to my shock, that one of my strongest opponents seems to be still trapped in the conflicts that I've moved past. I'm not sure how I feel about that, mostly sorry for him, I guess.

But I still seem to have some major scars about being talked about behind my back. It makes me angry and defensive. I wonder how much of that is Here&Now, and how much of it is survival rules left over from the past? And I wonder how I can tell the difference?

--SuePetersen 2006.09.08

But your example intriques me. :-) In physics terms, I maintain that there is a sound, although it's delayed and altered by being stored inside the third person. It may never arrive to me at all. But if and when it does, it helps if I'm aware of its presence.

--SuePetersen 2006.09.21

Let me take one of my crazy stabs at this. I admit I just wandered in at the end, and I am mostly reacting to the last two paragraphs. On the TV show House Dr. House often says about various symptoms noticed, "Is it medically relevant?" Is what someone says about you when you are not there personally relevant? Or, differently, is it all that significant?

I noticed that Jerry does a great job of reacting to the word on the page, or to what was just said. In some AYE exercises he was able to be very much in the moment and if something was not clear, he was able to get clarification of what was actually said. When you are worrying about what was said at another time as well as what was just said it makes it harder to appreciate what was just said. Since there are so many ways to view "the other goings on" that to worry about those things only clouds your ability to hear the current communication.

It is one thing to use accessory information to clarify a current communication and another thing to use that information to filter a current communication.

KurtSimmons 2006.09.22

EEP. Or, to quote my favorite Vulcan... "Fascinating."

I (thought I) was making an important point about seeing what was going on in the world around me, and understanding it. But the difference between 'clarify' and 'filter' is giving me pause...

Ummm, I think I'll be thinking about this one for a while. :-)

--SuePetersen 2006.09.22

Is this triangulating?

--KeithRay 2006.09.23

I love Dilbert! :-)

Yeah, I think that's triangulating. Or the day before that one was, anyway. This one shows some of the effects of triangulating, in anger and disrupted relationships.

--SuePetersen 2006.09.24